Author's Note: Hi everyone! Thanks to everyone who has been reading, reviewing, and placing this story on favorites and alerts. As always, I'm humbled by and thankful of your actions…And, um, stuff, and, away we go with chapter 6!
I don't own or have rights to Flashpoint.
Glasgow
Chapter 6: True Love
Day 2
8 am, St. Patrick's Hospital
After being dismissed from Jules' bedside the night before, Sam had returned to the place of his constant vigil in the waiting room. Greg, Spike, and Raf had all been there waiting with his requested coffee. He'd simply shaken his head while mumbling 'washroom' and returning to his seat. Greg had stared with indeterminable significance at him, but said nothing.
Sam had taken the coffee he was given with automatic, pre-programed social norms of gratitude. He'd barely taken a sip since that time as he was once again trapped in his own thoughts. Such thoughts were fleeting, yet captivating.
No one could speak for Ed, but the remainder of Team One had spent the night in the ICU waiting room in sleepless, concerned captivation. All it took to confirm this existence for Sam was one simple look at Spike's dazed, distortedly thinking face, Raf's meaningful frowns and frequent head shakes, and Greg's seemingly eternally valiant attempt at keeping a façade of reassurance on his face. This only confirmed for Sam how badly Greg was really taking all of this. He had childishly internally snorted at the thought that how badly Greg was taking this could never be as bad as he himself was taking it. A fatherly love went only so far; a passionate and compassionate love outlived all. Now Sam internally snorted at himself. He had to remind himself that there was enough suffering in the entire situation to go around and be shared by all. Love on any level was love, and all of the members of Team One loved Jules in their own way.
Sam's musings were interrupted by the approach of a doctor. Sam gave a slight sigh of relief. This morning's doctor was not the same pompous ass of a blunt dirt-bag who had heartlessly disseminated the information of the extent of Jules' injuries. He was not the same sniveling little arrogant snot who, under the guise of remaining professional, had shattered Sam's world. Shattered the whole world, a shattered world that the Earth would be without Jules. He wondered if she was still really on Earth, and if not, if it was already bleeding rivers of sorrow in her absence. Sam knew he himself was…
Sam shook himself from his brief reverie and rose to meet the doctor's approaching form. Hyper-aware of any disturbance in the air around him that might signal the arrival of another vessel of information on Jules' condition, Sam had been the first to react. Greg, Raf, and Spike soon jumped at the significance of Sam's movement and voluntary break from his catatonia.
"Good morning, Officers. I'm Dr. McDonna. Dr. Turner, who spoke with you yesterday, told me you were the family of Julianna Callaghan," Sam cringed slightly at this utterance, "and that I should call her Jules unless I want to get on the bad side of a SWAT team." The doctor smiled at this. So Turner had relayed the important yet non-essential and ultimately miniscule information about Jules' name, Sam thought. Maybe he wasn't such an un-feeling ass after all.
Sam took in Dr. McDonna's appearance and self-presentation cues. His body language wasn't tense or defeated. The ghost of a smile from his joke about SWAT teams still lingered on his face. Sam unclenched his fingers from the fist he just now noticed he'd balled them into in his terror of uncertainty. He now didn't anticipate bad news.
"How is she?" Greg spoke first, venturing into the waters of knowledge that Sam still slightly feared hearing about.
McDonna nodded his head. "We just finished a set of new brain scans. Although the swelling hasn't started to recede at all yet, it hasn't gotten worse and there's no sign of new bleeding. The seizures she's been suffering have slowed down in frequency."
Sam didn't really know what any of this information meant, but he figured it was relatively good news. He let a feeling of hope fill his heart for a brief moment.
"She's nowhere near out of the woods yet," the doctor continued, "but I'm confident we won't have to perform any of the brain lesioning Dr. Turner told you might be required yesterday." The remaining members of Team One breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Spike shook his head so as to relieve himself from some unknown internal abstraction and stepped forward. "What about her level on that scale? Her consciousness and awareness? Her…" Spike trailed off as if he was about to add more, but deemed it unnecessary in the grand scheme of this conversation.
Dr. McDonna frowned slightly and sighed at Spike's question. "I'm afraid I'm making this news sound better than it really is, and I don't want to give you all any inaccurate information." Sam's hand fisted into a strong clutch once more. "Although her condition hasn't gotten any worse, it also hasn't gotten any better." Sam fought the urge to slam his unbroken hand into the wall and provide himself with a matching pair of broken extremities. "She's still scoring a 4 of the GCS and like I said, the swelling in her brain hasn't gone down at all yet." Through the veil of his sorrow and rage at this intelligence, Sam caught a glimpse of a tear starting to well in Greg's eye. "But Jules did make it through the night, and that's a triumph in and of itself." McDonna ended on a slight smile as if he was proud of the role he had played in making sure Jules didn't die, truly leave the world, in the course of his watch through the night. "Your friend's a fighter."
A proud yet simultaneously sad grin lined Greg's face where he stood next to Sam. "That she is. Our Jules is tough," he patted Sam's back in assurance. To Sam's ear, Greg sounded like he was trying to convince himself of this fact so as to assure himself that Jules would continue to fight. Sam grasped ahold of this fleeting tethered hope as well.
"Although the situation is still quite critical—" There was that word again, 'quite.' Sam remembered how Dr. Turner had used that word too. In a non-sequitur wandering of his thoughts, he wondered if that was some part of the jargon doctors learned in medical school. A course on bed-side manner. –"We think we have Jules stable enough to have ONE," the doctor emphasized this last word, "visitor for a short period of time right now."
Both Sam and Greg stepped forward at this invitation. After a momentary pause to gather his thoughts and asses priorities, Greg stepped back again to allow Sam the courtesy offered by the medical staff. The reality of how much Greg was suffering through this entire ordeal struck Sam again. He was sure there was nothing, just like with himself, Greg would not give to see Jules and offer her some comfort in her time of need when in reality he just needed to see her to comfort himself of her continued existence on this plane. Sam wanted to offer him this little comfort, but not at the expense of missing a single moment with Jules himself. He nodded his head in thanks to Greg for his difficult concession and followed the doctor towards the ICU where his other half lay.
As they walked towards Jules' room, the doctor turned to Sam and said, "Now, I have to officially warn you that the sight of Jules might be shocking, although," McDonna raised an eyebrow at Sam, "I'm told that unofficially you already know that."
Sam nodded his head to at once acknowledge that he understood the doctor's warning about shock and the fact that he had ventured into the ICU without permission the previous night. Sam had visualized the image he'd seen last night and mentally prepared himself for what he would see when he entered Jules' room once more. He'd prepared himself to see Jules. Just Jules. His Jules. The person she was beyond wires, artificial respiration, and physical injuries.
The doctor guided him into her room and gave him one last warning. "I can only give you a few minutes, Officer Braddock." Sam was shocked that the good doctor knew his name. "A nurse will come get you and escort you out when that time has expired."
Sam nodded once more and turned towards his love. As the doctor left, Sam took in her appearance once again, but this time he didn't feel as deep of a sense of dread. He focused just as he had planned on the fact that this was still Jules; she was still with him on this physical plane.
He approached her and immediately grabbed her hand in a gentle embrace with both of his. He thought back to the previous morning, of how he had professed his love to her and how she had returned that gesture of love with a quick squeeze of his hand. "Hey, Jules," he sighed out with a slight smile. "Hey, sweetheart, I'm here now." He sat down on the graciously provided bedside chair and brought her hand up to his lips for a soft kiss. "I'm here, and I love you so much," he breathed out in a pleading whisper. He waited for her automatic hand squeeze as a return of his affections, but unlike the previous morning, it never came.
The realization of her inability to respond to him, tell him with one simple, non-verbal motion that she loved him too broke him a little more than any of the information the doctor had provided him with mere minutes before. A trail of tears began to cascade down his face as he wished she would just simply squeeze his hand, even the broken one, because the pain that action would cause would make him so happy, would overshadow and expunge the pain he felt throughout his entire being at her unresponsiveness.
"Oh, Jules," he sighed. "I'm here and I'll always be here for you. Just like you promised you'd always be there for me, remember?" He pleaded with her to share this memory with him, to live vicariously through its bitter sweet beauty even if it came from a time when they were not a couple.
It was from one of the worst days of his life. After building a strong connection with a former soldier, he had tried with all of his might and failed to talk the distraught young man down from what ultimately became suicide by cop in a condemned hockey arena. Anxious over his perceived uselessness as an SRU officer and fed-up with all of the death and destruction his life seemed to offer, he had cleaned out his locker and resigned himself to quit the SRU. Leaving his full bag in the locker room, he had gone to hide in the stairwell to give his nerves time to cool off so that he could safely drive home and start the next, hopefully non-violent, chapter of his life.
He should have known he couldn't hide from her. Not physically and certainly not emotionally.
He heard the creak of the door to the stairwell and looked over his shoulder at her approaching form. "I just want to be alone, Jules."
Jules scoffed at his words and sat next to him on the top stair. "Too bad, Braddock. The time for silent brooding and torturous contemplation is not upon us."
Sam sighed and remained silent. He knew she was here to change his mind about leaving the SRU. Thus, he expected her to speak first and break the ice. When five minutes passed and she hadn't, he turned towards her. "I can't do this anymore, Jules. I can't do this job anymore, can't deal with all this death." He shook his head and stared down at his hands. "My whole life is just death." He was thinking of his culpability in his little sister's premature death, killing dozens of people in the war, killing his own best friend in friendly fire, having to take the lives of subjects who went too far on the worst days of their lives, failing to save the poor young soldier today who reminded him so much of himself.
Jules forced him to stare at her right in the eye. "You had a rough call today, Sam. A rough day all around." He turned his head from her, and she forced it back with a light touch on his chin. "Sam, I know how you feel. We all have days like this. We all feel like we can't go on sometimes, like we have to quit." He stared deeply into her eyes just waiting for her to get to some far reaching point that she thought would change his already set mind.
When she began to open her mouth to spout out what Sam predicted would be another string of worthless platitudes, she did something she always managed to do, something that always made feelings for her stir within him: she surprised him. "We talk a lot about 'the job,' what 'the job' is. But it's not really that, Sam. What we do, who we are, this is 'the life.' Not everyone can do this job, Sam. Most people wouldn't last a week, a day, do'n what we do. But let me let you in on a little secrete, Sam. None of us can make it in this job, this life, without each other." She paused to let her words sink in. "And I will never let you down on that front, Sam. I will never let you go off and have to try to hack-it in this alone." She stared more deeply at him. "You're not done here at the SRU, Sam. You still have so much left to offer."
Sam stared back at her in utter disbelief. "Why do you care so much about this, Jules? Why do you care what happens to me?" For the life of him, he couldn't figure this question out. She'd dumped him, chosen 'the job' over him, and now she was trying to convince him that he should stick with this job she cared so much about even if he was demonstrating his incompetence, blemishing the career she loved?
Jules reached towards him and grabbed his hand to hold in her own. "Sam, I will ALWAYS care about you. I will ALWAYS be there for you," she promised him with conviction.
As she grasped his hand in comfort, an inexplicable feeling of emotion coursed through his veins at her words and gentle touch. And it was then that he knew it: he still loved her, and no matter how much he tried and might even succeed at getting over her, a part of him always would love her. And it wasn't just some lustful, passionate love that ignited young romance, it was a feeling of deep compassionate love that marked couples through and beyond their 50th wedding anniversaries. It was the kind of love that binded, lasted eternity. In this world and outside of it. A love that never dies.
After only a brief moment of this physical connection, Jules pulled away, because, Sam knew, she felt it too.
The smallest of smiles etched Sam's face, because this simple action and its automatic and unconscious consequences gave him the one thing he never thought he'd have on this, the darkest of his days: hope. Theirs was a connection that could not be broken, and somewhere deep down, they both knew it.
"Don't you remember promising that, Jules?" Sam asked his comatose love as he broke away from his reverie. "Please, Jules, please, you have to pull through and wake-up to keep that promise," he pleaded, her hand still motionless in his.
Jules had promised on the worst day of his life that she'd always be there for him. She'd promised that she would never let him have to go through 'the life' on his own. And now she was teetering on the edge of life and death. Who would be there to comfort him if she wasn't?"
8:17 am, Lane Residence
Ed sat at the family breakfast table bouncing his precious Izzy on his knee while he engaged in an animated conversation with his son Clark about the hockey team he was thinking about joining in the fall. As he leaned over to kiss his wife Sophie on the cheek as she poured him a refill of coffee, he thought about how surprised he was that his actions of the night before did not weigh heavily, or even at all, on his mind this morning. He was a man of action, and he had simply taken the needed steps to exact the justifiable vengeance necessary to keep the man who'd hurt Jules off the streets, both physically for the time being, and through fearful intimidation in the future.
"Goalie? When did this happen? I thought you were going out for Winger!" Ed questioned his son and savored this moment of perfect familial bliss. This was what he'd worked his whole life for, to have this not always perfect, but prefect enough, strong, loving family. He thought about how he'd always protect them, come what may.
"Nah, Dad. I'm fast, but I'm not big enough to be on the front line. I've been working on those hand-eye coordination drills you taught me to get sharper for try-outs."
Ed smiled at his son's enthusiasm and hard work. "And?"
Clark shot his father a cocky grin. "And I think I'm gonna smoke 'em at try-outs."
Before Ed could respond to his son's bravado, the resounding sounds of the front door bell filled the house. Sophie looked confused at the thought of who such an early morning caller would be, while Ed nodded his head slightly at the advent of the event he expected to come about. He was just glad he'd gotten to spend a happy and care-free breakfast with his family.
He rose from his chair, bent over to ruffle Clark's hair and kiss him on the crown of his head, lifted his daughter to kiss her on the cheek, and kissed Sophie quickly on the lips as he handed her their baby. "I love you guys so much," he told his confused family as he walked towards the door.
Opening the front door, Ed was not surprised to see a badge held out in front of him.
"Edward Lane, I have a warrant for your arrest."
8:32, St. Patrick's Hospital
As Greg waited for Sam's return from, and presumably report on, the ICU, he sat in melancholy silence with the two remaining members of Team One. The doctor's report hadn't been as good as he'd hoped, but he breathed a hefty metaphorical sigh of relief that Jules had made it through the night and that at least things hadn't gotten worse. He wanted more than anything to be by her side right now, to give her some sort of support that he intellectually knew she wouldn't be able to feel in her current condition. Mostly he wanted to just see her, to hold her hand, feel her pulse, to have visual and tangible proof that she was still with them, because he didn't know what the team as people, what he as a person, would do without her.
Greg looked up and took a moment to survey his surroundings. His eyes drifted and he caught sight of Raf. Greg suddenly wanted to kick himself. It had been 11 hours and he still hadn't taken the time to check on his team member who had had to make the fatal shot the day before. He got up from the unforgiving hard plastic chair he'd been occupying and walked to sit next to the young officer.
"Hey, Raf buddy, how ya do'n?" he asked with a smile. He glanced at Spike across the room for a second. The poor guy looked like he was trying to solve a logarithmic equation. Greg resolved to check on him next rather than get caught in another one of his torturous daydreams.
Raf sighed and shook his head. "I don't know, Boss. I just…" Raf couldn't seem to get the words he meant to say out.
Greg felt sorry for the young man. Having to kill a subject at the same moment that his team mate was put into critical condition constituted a pretty horrible day. "I know the past 24 hours haven't been easy for you, what with having to take the shot and learning that your team mate, our friend," Greg nearly choked out, "is in critical condition. You know I'm here to talk and help you through this, right?"
Raf shook his head again. "That's the thing, Sarge. I don't think I can get through this anymore." Greg furrowed his brow at Raf's words. "Not the need to kill. Not sitting around helplessly while your friend might…" Raf trailed off again, this time afraid to say the dreadful word.
Greg was afraid of where Raf's thoughts were leading him. "What are you saying, Raf?"
Raf looked up at Greg with his big, soulful eyes. "I don't know if I'm cut out for this." He sighed again as if he was ashamed of letting his Sergeant and all of his team down. "I think maybe I need some time to figure that out."
Greg nodded his head and patted Raf on the back. "Yeah," Greg understood where the young man was coming from, "maybe you should go ahead and take that time, buddy." He gave Raf a reassuring smile. "Listen. Why don't you go ahead back to HQ and fill out the paper work for a sabbatical? We'll call you if anything changes," Greg offered. He would work to protect the rest of the members of his team in any way he could.
Raf smiled sadly and rose to his feet. "Thanks, Boss. Tell Sam I'm here for him if he needs anything."
With that offer, Raf strode to the exit and the light of day. Greg sincerely hoped that Jules would be able to rise and do the same in a short time soon. His sense of pessimism made him pray that she would simply be able to open her eyes and be the person she was, is (Greg chided himself), at any point in the near future.
Before he could rise and repeat his ritual of support for Spike, he caught a glimpse of Wordy striding towards him. He wanted to kick himself again. In all of his own selfish angst over Jules' condition, he'd forgotten to call Wordy.
"Wordy, hey, I'm sorry," Greg said rising to meet his former entry specialist. "I should have called you so that you wouldn't have to hear everything from the grapevine."
Wordy cut him off with his hand. "No, Boss. I knew. I would have been here sooner, but we have a problem."
Greg looked both indignant and flabbergasted at once. "Yeah, I'd say we have a problem. Jules is in a coma and just fighting to stay alive at this point! What problem could be worse than that?" Greg was shouting in pent-up rage, fear, and anxiety over the whole situation.
"Boss," Wordy said calmly, sadness and fear at Greg's words about Jules lining his face. "Ed's been arrested for assault and battery, and attempted murder."
Author's Additional Note: Oh dear. Things do not look good for our heroes… Special thanks to MollyLyn and Tirsh for reassuring me about Canadians calling hockey goalies, well, goalies. What with the Euro going on and all those keepers, I was freaking myself out about the possibility of getting Canadian terminology wrong.
Please leave a review and let me know what you think of this HUGEGANTUS (for me anyway) chapter.
Peace,
Eals, aka (for today) Kyle The Ligor
